Shocking Truth About Scholarships and 6 Tips To Get One

Having a fulfilling college life followed by a successful career are what high school dreams are made of. Often, these dreams come to a halt when we realize that college tuition isn’t cheap and the chances of loans are bleak. Dreamers live in denial and realists re-adjust their plans to better fit their options. Opportunists, however, strike when the iron is hot.

Before we give you the shocking yet surprising truths about university scholarships, let’s take a moment to discuss how University Scholarships are planned.

Well, the analogy is same as airline ticket pricing. It’s a science in itself which is infamously known as Airline Revenue Management. They take into consideration who, where, when and with. For example, well-planned business trips are cheaper while well planned holidays are not. In fact, a spontaneous holiday ticket might be cheaper compared to a well thought one.

Likewise, Universities plan well in advance how many scholarships they want to give and this is mostly tied with their agenda of filling up a required number of seats. Just like any other ‘business’, even Universities compete with each other and want to meet their target number of occupancy.

Scholarships are given to maintain an academic balance in any graduating class. Universities want to motivate well deserving, financially in-adept students to study with them and have successful careers. Hence, they mainly consider two things before giving out scholarships.

The quality of Student – In terms of his grades, and his academic profile (CV); what the student has done to build his profile and if he has demonstrated an interest in the field that he is applying to.

Likelihood of Joining – If given a certain percentage of scholarship, will this student accept it and join them.

At the start of the admission cycle, they give scholarships more freely which is why you need to interact with the universities a bit early. If the admission officer is confident that a student will apply and join in, they are much more likely to offer a scholarship (discount) in order to ‘seal the deal’. Hence get the students to start interacting with the universities from grade 11 onwards. An important point to note here is that there are very rare if not few 100% tuition fee waivers. Once 50% of their seats are filled, the need to offer more scholarships or discounts is lesser.

That being said, not all universities follow this pattern. Top universities all over the world don’t need to offer any scholarships/discounts. They will take admission purely basis applications received and quality. However, the percentage of universities that fall in this category is low.

Univariety Tip – If you want to get scholarships, you have to engage with admission officers of various universities. This is not true just for students going abroad but also for students looking at options within India. Work on your grades, build a strong profile and be at a position where you can negotiate your scholarship offers.

Like we said at the start – be an opportunist.

Here are few straight and simple ways which can help you get university scholarships. Take a look at the video below to know our tested secrets! The univariety system helps students of our partnering schools to engage with universities and create scholarship offers. Over $12 million scholarships created so far!